It’s never an easy job to make the flowers bloom in a desert. It’s never an easy task to walk on the water. It’s never an easy task to reach the destination by your car when you are running out of fuel. But some dare to do it. Some dare to bloom flowers in a desert, some dare to walk on the water and some dare to reach their destination by their car even when they are running out of fuel.
In the world of ODI
cricket, very few of these daring but cool and assured characters are seen.
They show their true colours when the game is in the balance and the pressure
is enormous and when the going gets tougher. With enough composure and with an
ice-cool approach they just pull the match out of the fire.
In ODI cricket we love and cheer more for those who exhibits
wide range of exciting strokes, raises their bat more often after reaching
milestones. We don’t really relish the ice-veined finishers who just finish off
a match in grand style when all had given up hopes. These ice-veined finishers
are one of the most important ingredients to enrich ODI cricket.
On Monday night, at Colombo, there had been something unique
from a Sri Lankan young man who single handedly steered his team through the
troubled waters into the shore with safety by essaying a gem of a knock. Sri
Lankans, chasing Pakistan’s
huffed-puffed target of 248, found themselves in a rut at 138-6. But Mathews,
who walked out to bat at 97-4, remained unfazed against Gul’s bouncers,
Tanvir’s sharp inswingers and the accurate spin bowling of Afridi and Hafeez
and despite all these, Mathews adsorbed the pressure by nurturing the tail with
astute authority and went on to make the mission impossible possible.
It’s not the first time that Mathews made such an impossible
task possible. Remember the Melbourne ODI where Sri Lanka were down and dusted at
107-8 chasing a total of 240? It was at
that point of time Mathews dared to dream the impossible with Lasith Malinga.
With the utter astonishment of the Aussies, Mathews snatched victory from the
jaws of defeat with an innings of a life time.
This year at Perth, in the Common Wealth Bank series,
Mathews again made the Aussies run for their money from a hopeless situation,
but sadly in the end he couldn’t finish it style as Sri Lanka fell 5-run short
of the total. Boy! At present, this man is a master in handling pressure with
authority in the cricketing world, this man can adapt to a crisis situation
like a Dhoni and Michael Bevan.
Like Bevan, Mathews, under pressure, milk the singles here
and there by picking up the gaps with enough smartness. While like Dhoni, he
adds hitting alongside repertoire of deft boundaries and hair like running
between the wickets - an exciting mixture of daringness and composure in true
sense of terms.
Pressure simply transforms Mathews into a shinning diamond
and diamonds are created by putting enough pressure on a piece of charcoal.
Such diamonds are those gardeners who can make the flowers bloom in a desert –
a customer for the toughest assignments.
Mathews is a damn good finisher who, according to Rob Smyth,
‘Inscrutable and laconic; strong silent types who are more film noir detective
than gunslinger.’
Angelo Mathews is that dead-eyed champion army of cricket
who is assigned for the mission impossible. His heart don’t skip a beat while
looking down the barrel and whose bums don’t squeak when the asking rate is
more than 10 runs per over. He uses his bat like a magic wand which shows its
magic in the moments of crisis. Undoubtedly, Mathews is well on track to become
cricket’s most precious ornaments on whom cricket itself will be proud of.
Thank You
Faisal Caesar
